BX 5937 
• CQ C7 

Copy 1 



Conbentton iSibbresis; 



of 



pt£it)op (greet 



/ 



l^ptjember, 1914 



CONVENTION ADDRESS 



OF 



BISHOP GREER 



NOVEMBER 11th, 1914 



*"^'V 



^\^i 



By trjsnssf <9r 
The Uta House 



It is again my privilege to meet with you in Convention and 
to bring to your notice some of the more distinctive tendencies of 
thought in the present age, in order that the Church may address 
itself with a more effective service to its present and proper 
work. I realize that this is not an easy thing to do, because 
it is always a difficult thing for a person to interpret the ten- 
dencies of the age of which he is himself a contemporary part, 
in that his vision of it, however clearsighted, is a vision with- 
out the adequate perspective. And because further, the present 
age, with so many cross and counter currents in it, so many 
teachers teaching, so many prophets prophecying, so many 
oracles clamoring to be heard, and all of them speaking with the 
tacit assumption of an ex-cathedra authority, is an exceptionally 
difficult age to interpret and express. Someone has suggested 
that an appropriate sign or seal for the present age would bej 
as expressing on the one hand its insatiable curiosity and on 
the other the alleged or supposed apathy of the Church, the 
following design: 

An Interrogation Point Rampant ; 

Three Bishops Dormant; 

With the word "Query" written underneath. 

That may not be a fitting characterization; I hope it is not 
altogether so ; but then what other is ? For it is, as I have said, 
a difficult age to define with anything like a definite and com- 
prehensive statement. This difficulty has been made still more 
difficult of late by the sudden irruption into the modern world 
of a new, or rather an old, unexpected force which has thrown 
it out of joint with all established reckoning. And while this 
international and fratricidal strife, this holocaust of war, is in- 
deed the engrossing topic of the hour and might perhaps be made 



.a topic by itself for this Convention address, yet there has been 
of late so much said about it both by press and pulpit, so many 
articles written and so many sermons preached, that there is 
apparently nothing new to be said, or not at least just now. And 
then too the present war is not representative of the present age. 
It is a reversion ; or, in vulgar phrase, a throw-back, to a savage 
and barbarous age, and does not express or typify the sober 
thought of the people. 

Let us then for a little while turn aside from this engrossing 
topic, from wars and rumors of wars, from an age drunk with 
passion, and try to hear and understand its underlying sober 
thought as we find that thought expressed in what may be re- 
garded as its two interpreting voices, — the voice of its Philosophy 
and the voice of its Science. This may seem an ambitious classi- 
fication for a brief Convention address and yet I hope its fitness 
will appear as we proceed ; and possibly too we shall find that it 
is pointing out the way in which the Church should try to heal 
and cure the age of its conflicts and its strifes, to give it the 
blessing of peace and to bring it back to God. 

First, then let us consider the voice of the current philosophy. 
The distinguished publicist, de Tocqueville, in one of his books, 
says, "Though I care but little about the study of philosophy 
as such, I have always been struck with the influence which it 
has exerted over the things which seem to be the least connected 
with it, and even over society in general. For philosophical 
ideas however abstract, metaphysical and apparently unpractical, 
penetrate at last, I know not how, into the realm of public 
morals." But the "how" or the reason of it is this, that the 
philosophy of an age is a kind of clearing-house expression of 
a felt and growing yet groping life or groping life-reality exist- 
ing in the age. 

"Just as Justinian's pandects only made precise, 
What simply sparkled in men's eyes before. 
Twitched in their brow, or quivered in their lip. 
Waited the speech they called but would not come." 

Now the philosophy of the present age, as all observing 
students clearly enough perceive — although it has been for a 

4 



time arrested or suppressed by the lust of war — is not a ma- 
terial, but a spiritual philosophy, interpreting human life not in 
terms of matter but in terms of spirit. And it is the current 
philosophy, not simply as a current above the earth in the air, 
but because it represents a current in human life on the earth; 
because it expresses beneath the hard surface crust of our ma- 
terial things some nascent spiritual life which is today beginning 
to work and to make itself felt. A few years ago that was not 
the case, or not so much the case. The current philosophy then 
was a material philosophy, because the current life was then a 
material life, which Emerson described when in speaking of his 
own generation, he said : 

"Today is the day of the chattel, 
Web to weave and corn to grind; 
Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." 

And so they did. And so they do now to some extent, to a 
great extent, but not to the same extent. A reaction has set in, 
and men have begun to find, not as the result of theoretical 
teaching but of their own growing and practical experience that 
they cannot live and find themselves, their full and normal selves, 
by means of bread alone, or by the material equivalents of bread. 
And so today they are reaching out after something else and 
more and beginning to take or to try to take something like 
a spiritual life or spiritual culture on. It is not only the few 
who are trying to do it; the many are trying to do it, the 
"common" people as we call them ; Lincoln's people ; they too are 
trying to take some spiritual culture on, through libraries and 
lectures and Chautauqua assemblies and university extension 
courses, and in many other ways, not as a means to an end, but 
as an end in itself. It may indeed be fairly called a democratic 
movement, this movement towards some kind of spiritual life 
and culture, a movement of the people ; not all of them of course, 
but many of them and more than ever before. Hence we find 
as expressive of all this that the current and appealing philos- 
ophy, the philosophy that is in the saddle today and riding man- 
kind, is not a material but spiritual philosophy, and riding in- 
deed so hard that it is riding some of the people off into strange 
bridle paths. 



If then it be true that the current philosophy of any parti- 
cular age is not merely a dream or dreamy speculation of fasci- 
nating interest to the metaphysical mind but the reflection rather 
of some real and growing life in the age itself, then does the 
spiritual philosophy which is current in this age bear witness to 
the existence in the age itself of some emerging spiritual life 
or spiritual value in it. It is in short the testimony of the age 
itself, apart from all other testimony, to the reality of the 
spiritual life, to which the Church must minister if it would 
minister to the age and bring it back to God. 

But the real and sober thought of an age, its governing 
thought, is expressed not only by its philosophic voice but also 
by what is commonly called its "scientific" voice. And what 
today is that scientific voice? Is it too giving a spiritual mes- 
sage to us? There was a time, not long ago, some of us are old 
enough to remember it, when it was not a spiritual message, 
when we used to hear much about the conflict between science 
and religion or the spiritual postulates of religion. Many ser- 
mons were preached upon the subject and many volumes writ- 
ten. And yet, even then, some of the best and greatest and most 
effective preachers, ignoring this alleged conflict and contention 
and believing in the power of a spiritual message to elicit a re- 
sponse, made that spiritual message the burden of their preach- 
ing. Some of us can remember again a saying of Phillips 
Brooks, for instance, that never throughout the whole course of 
his ministry had he preached a single sermon on the conflict 
between science and religion. That was rather unusual then, but 
now it is not unusual. For that alleged conflict has now be- 
come an anachronism; it is obsolete and gone, or nearly though 
not altogether gone ; for it still lingers on, or the echo of it does, 
in some belated minds, as a rudimentary survival of a past gen- 
eration. 

But how rapidly things have changed in these later days! 
Science is not hostile to religion now or to the spiritual postu- 
lates of religion, and the voice with which it speaks, like the 
voice of modern philosophy, is beginning to take a spiritual 
accent on and to give a spiritual message. Lest it should be 
thought that I am biased in my opinion by my own religious 
calling, let me quote what an up-to-date scientist has said ; and 



although he does not say anything that you do not already know 
it may be well to hear it from a scientific source : 

"The foundation on which has rested," he says, "the material 
school of thought, from Lucretius down to the present time, is 
the ultimate atom of matter, which was supposed and alleged 
to be the simple and primal basis of the universe and of all 
reaHty. Of late, however," he continues, "this foundation has 
been rudely shaken, if not overthrown; for now we know as 
the result of further scientific analysis that the atom of matter 
although of inconceivable minuteness is in its structure exceed- 
ingly complex, at least one hundred millions being contained in 
the least visible point under the highest microscopic power. It 
is in short a solar system in miniature, and each of these atoms 
again consists of still more minute negative electrons swiftly re- 
volving around some positive central nucleus. Even the com- 
paratively gross and complex atoms of gaseous matter move 
among themselves so swiftly that each of them encounters its 
neighbor some six thousand millions of times in every second." 
These are inconceivable and overwhelming figures, but they 
are scientific figures, figures which go to show that all the things 
we see and touch and handle or sensibly perceive, that all phe- 
nomena are but unseen molecular motions in the all-pervading, 
impenetrable, inscrutable, elusive ether of space. And so, he 
adds significantly, science in its progress is resolving the seen 
into the unseen and confirming what we have long ago been told, 
that "the things which are seen were not made of the things 
which do appear." 

I have quoted in substance the language of Sir William Bar- 
rett, F.R.S. As the result therefore of that infinitesimal analy- 
sis which represents the trend of modern scientific thought, 
science itself has sifted itself from the "ore of materialism," 
and matter is seen to be not the primary but the secondary ex- 
pression of reality. Or, putting it in another way, the current 
of scientific thought as it has been traced further down the 
stream, and still further and further down, has been found at 
last to vanish and disappear and go into things unseen and 
eternal, thus widening out the horizon of our modern thought 
until it has become a spiritual horizon and given to our human 
life a spiritual environment. 



Here then we have the two voices of the age, its two in- 
terpreting voices, not imposed upon it but proceeding from it, 
its philosophy and its science ; one of them testifying to the reaHty 
of a spiritual life, and the other to the reality of a spiritual 
environment. But that is the voice or message of the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ, the reality of a spiritual life in the midst of a 
spiritual environment. This Gospel, therefore, of Jesus Christ 
is not something obscurant or out of date, but something rather 
up-to-date, the very latest date, and giving to the modern world 
for its modern needs and uses a circulating medium which, 
although it was minted long ago in the past, is now more than 
ever the current coin of the realm, ringing real and true. Or, 
changing the metaphor, this Gospel of Jesus Christ, is not an 
evening twilight, beautiful and peaceful yet slowly fading away 
and receding into the dark; it is a morning dawn, full of hope 
and promise, rising over the hills, filling the valleys and flooding 
the plains and making clear or clearer what the modern world 
itself is beginning to perceive, — the reality of a spiritual life in 
the midst of a spiritual environment. We sometimes hear men 
talk or speculate about the religion of the future and what it 
will or ought to be, that religion of the future. Well, personally 
I have no misgivings about the religion of the future; but even 
if I had, we are not living in the future, we are living in the 
present, we are feeling the needs of the present, we are facing 
the evils of the present ; this living, beating, throbbing Present, 
with all its hopes and fears. And whatever the religion of the 
future may be — and sufficient unto the future is the future — the 
religion of the present and for the present, for its present needs 
and ailments and for the confirmation of all its brightest hopes, 
is the old, or if men please to call it so, the old-fashioned reli- 
gion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, asserting and proclaiming 
what the present age itself through its own self-revealing or self- 
interpreting voices, is beginning to perceive, — the reality of a 
spiritual life in the midst of a spiritual environment. 

And this testimony of the age is not confined to a certain 
part or section of the age, our part of it, and which with a self- 
flattering complacency we are wont to call the more cultivated 
part, and then to speak of the other part as something foreign to 
us. We cannot make that cleavage today ; it does not exist ; there 

8 



is no foreign part; the very word "foreign" is passing out of 
use, if not from the vocabulary of the Church at least from the 
vocabulary of the age; and, Kipling notwithstanding, the east 
and west can meet and do meet, they are meeting now; not 
merely in armed preparation for war, but in something which 
in time will do away with war. They are meeting today in 
thought, in the real, true and sober thought of the age. They are 
meeting in scientific thought, the science of the west penetrating 
the east. They are meeting in philosophic thought, the philos- 
ophy of the east penetrating the west. Or, putting it in another 
way, the new spiritual philosophy which is springing up in the 
west, is touching, meeting and mingling with and appealing to 
the east. I was recently told by a gentleman (not a missionary), 
who had had- exceptional opportunity for noting and observing 
the thought — habit of modern Japan, that the thing which 
there impressed him most was not the remarkable physical or 
material development of the nation, but the avidity, "the remark- 
able avidity," he called it, with which the philosophic writings 
of Eucken (not his recent pronouncements, but his philosophic 
writings) were sought, read and studied by the people of Japan. 
It amounted, he said, to almost a physical hunger. 

Yes, the east and the west are meeting today, and there as 
here the real, true and sober thought of the age is beginning to 
bear witness to the reality of a spiritual life in the midst of a 
spiritual environment. Everywhere, both east and west, the age 
is ripe and ready for the Gospel of Jesus Christ; and if the 
Church would do a really modern work, abreast of the time and 
up to date, it must do a foreign work, or what it still persists 
in calling a "foreign" work. I have not the time to dwell on 
this, or to speak of the Church's method through its Board of 
Missions of carrying on this work. That is a m.atter of detail 
which does not come within the scope of my present purpose, 
and I will say but this, — If the missionary method of the Church 
through its Board of Missions is at the present time faulty and 
defective, let us by all means correct it, but let us not turn the 
power off; rather let us try while improving these mechanical 
things, to keep the power on. For it is the mark of statesman- 
ship in the Church, as elsewhere, "to improve the machinery 
without impairing the energy which keeps the machinery in mo- 



i 



r-v- 



-^^ '^U<^-'«-tX/ 



/V/> ^^^-^K 









tion." But that, as I have said, is a matter of detail, and I 
am speaking now not of details but of fundamentals. What I 
am trying to stress and emphasize is this,— --that the present age 
is ripe for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that now is the time 
for the Church not to delete or lower or compromise its spiritual 
message to men, and not to hold it back from either east or 
west, but more confidently than ever, more hopefully than ever, 
to publish and proclaim it, and to call upon the people, east and 
west and everywhere, and in everything, not only in every pri- 
vate thing, but in everything, public as well as private, to seek 
first the Kingdom of God. In that way too will it help to make 
the new democracy which is coming, which is surely coming, 
which is rising on the world and spreading through the nations 
both in the east and west, and which neither statecraft, nor 
Csesar-craft, nor war-craft, nor Church-craft can stop ; not 
chiefly or not merely a scramble and a grab, a greedy grab and 
scramble, by nations or by individuals, but a great and growing 
spiritual force for the social growth and progress of the world, 
and to help it thus to reach that destiny still undetermined which 
in the providence of God awaits it in the future. 

I referred at the outset to the present war : How shall we 
heal or cure that strife whose fearful loss and ravage, whose 
manifold forms of suffering it is impossible for language to 
depict? Or, how shall we prevent a future recurrence of it? 
By international treaties and arbitration courts? All that, of 
course, is good, very good. It is helpful and much to be desired 
and should be in every way encouraged and promoted. And 
yet must we go more deeply down than that, more deeply 
down than nationalism, with its national prides and ambitions 
and national glorifications ; otherwise we shall find that we 
are building our national houses on the sand, and that when 
the storms of passion, of national passion, come, and jealousy 
and greed, and frictional attrition and all the winds and 
tempests of national pride and honor come and beat upon 
those houses, they wilt surely fall, as they are falling now, 
into the desolations and desecrations of a war without a 
parallel in the history of mankind, and shall be made to see 
as we are seeing now, how great is the fall thereof. 

Yes, we must go more deeply down, and touch and reach 

10 



foundations, and build upon a rock; and Jesus Christ is the 
Rock, not only for the security of the individual life, not only 
for the security and safety of the Church, but also for the secur- 
ity and safety of the nations; and not until the nations hear 
and heed His voice, speaking and saying to them, "Seek first 
the Kingdom of God," will strifes and wars and national con- 
flicts cease, and national strength and safety and national great- 
ness come. 

It is a hard thing to attempt, even to attempt this kind of 
national greatness, harder far than fighting. It is a brave thing 
to attempt, braver far than fighting ; but it is coming. The real, 
true and sober thought of the age is preparing the way for its 
coming, and the wars of the nations cannot stop, cannot hinder 
its coming. Through failures and reverses as well as through 
successes, under the helping guidance of the Christian Church, 
teaching, preaching and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it will 
continue to come. 

"Strive if ye will, to seal the fountains 

That send the Spring thro' leaf and spray ; 
Drive back the sun from the eastern mountains 
Then — bid this mightier movement stay. 

It is the dawn of Peace. The Nations 

From East to West have heard the cry; 
Though all Earth's blood-red generations 

By hate and slaughter climbed thus high, 
Here — on thi^ height — still to aspire, 

One only path remains untrod, 
One path of love and peace climbs higher — 

Make straight that highway for our God!" 



BROOKLYN EAGLE PRESS 



J/^^/K. U f -— ^ 



• r — ^ M 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



9 566 709 3 



S 



